Instead of Harmony There Was Nothing but Rags

• Links, as promised.
• Why has the logic of the free market become so closely linked to evangelical religiosity?
• Evangelical religiosity.
• Anthropocene v Capitalocene.
• Against the anthropocene.
• The age of neoliberal authoritarianism.
• On the reception and detection of pseudo-profound bullshit.
• America's deadliest police.
• Trump's appeal. Here's Trump's appeal: Does his candidacy and my support for it piss you off regardless of your political affiliation? Yes? GOOD!
• Reminder: Democrats.
• Reminder: Obama made Rahm his Chief of Staff, supported his election as Chicago mayor.
• The elf on the shelf.
• Jake is at The Intercept?
• In the past twelve hours a bot in Germany has pinged the blog more than 2000 times. A google bot in Seattle has pinged in more than 1500. Once this would have freaked me out. Now? I just need to keep my mouth shut at work the rest of the week.
• Beckett, for those of you who do.
• Josipovici, an interview, for those of you who do.
• Stevens, for those of you who do.
• Throwing Muses, as promised.

PROOF OF POETRY

Tom Sleigh

I wanted first to end up as a drunk in the gutter

and in my twenties I almost ended up there—

and then as an alternative to vodka, to live

alone like a hermit philosopher and court

the extreme poverty that I suspected lay in store for me anyway—

and then there were the years in which

I needed very badly to take refuge in mediocrity,

years like blunt scissors cutting out careful squares,

and that was the worst, the very worst—

you could say that always my life

was like a patchwork quilt always ripped apart—

my life like scraps stitched together in a dream

in which animals and people,

plants, chimeras, stars,

even minerals were in a preordained harmony—

a dream forgotten because it has to be forgotten,

but that I looked for desperately, but only sporadically

found in fragments, a hand lifted to strike

or caress or simply lifted for some unknown reason—

and in memory too, some specific pain, sensation of cold or warmth.

I loved that harmony in all its stages of passion,

the voices still talking inside me . . . but then, instead of harmony,

there was nothing but rags scattered on the ground.

And maybe that's all it means to be a poet.